


say not soft things

by depugnare



Series: Firebird [3]
Category: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (Movies), Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Character Study, Gen, War, World War I, it's not a war story it's a love story, lamia newt, part-creature newt, that's a thing okay. we made it up.
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-03
Updated: 2017-01-03
Packaged: 2018-09-14 11:19:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,599
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9179218
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/depugnare/pseuds/depugnare
Summary: Newton Scamander thought he'd never see the face of the war.He was wrong.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Note: In traditional folklore, Lamia was a queen that was the mistress of Zeus, and Hera killed her children and turned her into a monster. She is usually depicted as half snake, though that comes later. She is a demon that eats children out of grief for her own (in some versions, Hera forces her to eat her own children), cursed to keep her eyes open forever so that she always sees the image of her own dead children. A Lamia in this is a woman who has been cursed like this and Newt and Theseus' mother had a Lamia for a distant ancestor and she has passed this blood on mostly to Newt, hence their eyes and his 'mothering' of creatures and snake-like features.

They told him he’d have a job right away doing what he loved. That he’d be traveling the world, dealing with creatures and allowed to study them. Newt Scamander, seventeen years old and working for the Ministry of Magic already! Sent him along to study all manner of beasts, placed an emphasis on dragons in Europe. He did not mind, he loved the enormous creatures, the wisdom hidden in their reptilian eyes.

 

They did not tell him they were planning a war. That all the old rich men did not care for the dreams of a newly graduated student, so eager to begin his journey. A boy just turned a man who still aches to leave home, who is not tired of the sun on his face.

 

They never do.

 

-

_Mother. The one who raised you._

 

_By the time you had come along, Theseus was well into childhood and cared not for a younger sibling that could not play his rough and tumble games. Your father was less interested, already gifted with a son and heir, another child was not such a wondrous thing. He loved you, but always from a distance._

 

 _Mother named you for her. Newton_ **_Artemis_ ** _. You might have had your father’s looks, but you were your mother’s child, a woman with no daughter to remember her name. So it was you she bestowed the title upon, it was you who smiled sharp and knowing before you could even speak._

 

_She kept you swaddled close to her, taught you from a babe in arms that the hippogriffs she raised were noble and wise. They knelt to you when you were just a toddler, your own head bowed in respect. You walked the earth and the birds watched you from the trees, silent. Your father finds you curled up in a fox’s den one day, nestled beside the vixen like you were her pup. You unsettle him, and your brother who is so very much like him. They do not understand._

 

_You are your mother’s child, blood and all. When you open your right eye on your thirteenth birthday, the eye of a viper stares back. Suddenly, it is understood._

 

_Newton Artemis, master of the beasts._

 

_-_

 

His brother loves the war. Tall, bold Theseus takes to it like a starving dog given a piece of raw meat to choke down. He consumes the war, violent and eager. Theseus who’d been too much to handle for as long as Newt can remember. He’s let loose on the front lines and he cuts a swath through the enemy that leaves Newt retching up the meagre meal he’d had a few hours before.

 

His brother, already a war hero, stunned a man so viciously he’d died mid-stride. His corpse bloomed purple, veins bursting from the pressure.

 

Newt saw it all from within the trench, peering over while waiting for his time to emerge. He rested his chin on the earth, heedless of the bullets and spells alike whistling overhead. He watched Theseus, hair a violent red against the muddy horizon. He looked small among the teeming masses of men clawing each other to death, another warm corpse above the frozen dead.

 

Newt wonders how his brother can still be so vibrant, still flushed with blood and sweat. All around him are the dead, their bones like jagged teeth in the shovel-carved smile in the earth. Ash coats his tongue and the smell of rot has settled in the back of his throat. He could fade into the earthen walls, his bones made into support struts, his spine a ladder for the soon to be dead.

 

And still his brother comes back, words flowing from his bloody mouth. Newt cannot bear it, that light in his brother’s eyes. His brother is still alive and it drives him mad.

 

“You should have seen it!” he bellows in their shared tent, cleaning mud from his boots. “A whole platoon of muggles, bayonets fixed, and I took them down with one spell! Not a single shot fired.”

 

Newt lays with his back to him, blankly staring at the tent’s wall.

 

“Can you believe it Newt? A fight ended without a single gunshot! Imagine if they’d let me at the artillery brigade.”

 

“Be quiet Theseus,” Newt says, unmoving. His brother falls silent for once, and Newt can feel his eyes on his back.

 

“I thought you’d be pleased,” says Theseus, voice soft. Theseus has always been so gentle with him. Afraid.

 

“You hate to fight don’t you? Well I didn’t kill a single man today. ”

 

 _Yes you did,_ Newt wants to say. _I saw him. Another one stunned into a corpse. Rigor mortis before death._

 

“Is that so?” he says instead. Theseus begins talking again and Newt lets him, used to it by now.

 

His brother is alive. That itself will be strange in a few months time.

  


-

_Tell me, he says. Tell me about the war._

 

_It was quiet._

 

_Quiet?_

 

_Quiet and dark. Filled with slippery things. Mud. Blood. Courage._

 

_Courage?_

 

_Hard to catch. Hard to swallow. An eel slipping in and out of the heart, never nesting inside._

 

_Were you brave?_

 

_No._

 

_Did you kill a man?_

 

_Yes._

 

_The enemy?_

 

_Yes._

 

_Then you were brave._

 

_No. The man I killed was brave._

 

_The enemy? They were cowards._

 

_The only coward in war is yourself. Too scared to see what you have become. Too scared to find what has always been there, hidden beneath the cage of your ribs._

 

_Tell me about the war._

 

_I can only give you this: in war, even the earth cries out for its mother._

 

-

 

He has two orders he is never supposed to break.

 

One, he can never reveal himself to the muggles, civilian or otherwise.

 

Two, no matter how valuable, should a creature risk exposure of the magical world it is to be eliminated effective immediately.

 

He’s broken both of them. He cannot leave a creature suffering, and humans are beasts no matter how many words pass their lips. He has slit the throat of enemy and comrade alike who think they can go into towns and terrorize the civilians. He has scooped up a babe squalling in her dead mother’s arms and carried her for miles, looking for muggles to take her in.

 

(You must be careful when doing that. A baby squalling in the night attracts all sorts of things looking to eat them up. Humans included.)

 

Once he was summoned to kill a dragon. A small thing, young, no bigger than a horse. Its mother was missing, mostly like dead from the aerial weapons. It was green, green like the fields at home, and had curled up under a tarp, afraid.

 

“Kill it,” ordered the colonel, a wizard who had never seen a war in his 40 years of life. A man who lived behind the front lines, scurrying like a rat. “For god’s sake man, why are you hesitating?! It’s just a lizard.”

 

Newt drew his wand and wordlessly, mercilessly, imperiused the man to walk straight towards the trenches. So he too knew what it was like to face death against your will.

 

Then he softly approached the dragon, murmuring all the time.

 

“It’s alright. I’ve gotten rid of him. It’s just you and me, and I’m not so bad you know. I know a place with other dragons, perhaps one of them has seen your mother, hmm?”

 

The dragon pokes its head out and their gazes meet, yellow eye to yellow eye. The dragon shrinks, as young dragons do while still unable to defend themselves with fire, and scampers up his trouser leg. Newt bundles the young dragon into his coat and goes on his way, obliviating the entire camp with a flick of his hand.

 

He is not so bad until you get to know him.

 

Then, you would know better than to call him a man.

  
  


-

 

_Many eons ago, Scamander was the name of a river god who fought on the side of the Trojans. The losing side, if you are to believe the body count and the story of the victors._

 

_But Aeneas goes on to found Rome, so was it truly a loss? A city or one of the most extensive empires in the world?_

_Britain was much the same. What  are 60,000 men in a single battle when you have the world in the palm of your hand? You always wondered what it was like, to kill that many people with the ink of a pen signing the order. Is that why they could, because it was ink that stained their hands and not blood?_

 

_You perched yourself in a tree once, watched the battle from high above. It looked like toy soldiers being moved by childish hands, only you could not pick the fallen up and put them back in formation again. They rusted in the dirt, turning blue from lack of blood._

 

_Still, you watched, listened to the deafening roar of war. The screaming of the living and that moans of the dying. Lost yourself in that sound, slipped inside of it so you could pretend you were only deep inside your warring heart. Listening to your flesh fight against bone for space beneath your skin._

 

_It was not a good enough lie._

_-_

 

Christmas Eve, 1917. A cold, dark night full of snow and silence. The sound of bullets had long ago faded away, that sanctimonious, that hallowed truce already in effect. Men who would eat each other for a taste of meat now sang and broke bread together.

 

Wizards had always been less sentimental. A holiday was no reason to cease hostilities, they were creatures of binding words and scrolls that promised peace written in blood. That is why he’s here now, standing over his older brother who lays gasping and still on the ground.

 

He should let him die, has seen what lays a few feet within the treeline, but Theseus is his brother and Newt is loyal if nothing else.

 

“Newt.”

 

He looks down at Theseus, yellow eye blinking a second slower than his blue one. Studying. Trying to decide what to do with him. Blood oozes from his brother’s side, enormous claw marks glistening wetly in the moonlight. He can see his brother’s ilium, a horrid white amidst the red.

 

“Newt, it’s me”

 

“I know,” he whispers, kneeling down by his head. He puts a hand on his brother’s side, muscle and tendons knitting back together.

 

“I did a terrible thing Newt.”

 

“I know,” whispers Newt again, wordlessly healing the crack in his brother’s pelvis before sealing the skin back up.

 

“I didn’t mean to. It got in the way, I was trying to save it. For you. But it…it went wild. Vicious.”

 

Newt licks at his lip, cracked from the cold. His brother watches, eyeing his tongue, that fork barely visible at the tip. Theseus’ face turns pale.

 

It’s not from blood loss.

 

“The only vicious creatures on this planet,” Newt says, helping his brother to his feet, “are humans.”

 

Theseus very much has the feeling that their shared blood just saved his life. Newt has hurried off into the treeline, and lets out a low sound of pain when he sees the dragon youngling’s corpse. It had shrunk down just before it died, and now lays limp in Newt’s arms.

 

“I didn’t-” Theseus starts, before nearly choking on his tongue when Newt whips around to glare at him. The dragon young looks so small and frail in his arms, but it had been the size of a horse when Theseus had killed it.

 

“I know.”

 

_I know you are a monster slayer and I am a monster._

 

_-_

 

_Brothers are strange creatures. Biting at each other from a young age, as though they do not know whether to assume the role of protector, or eat the younger and keep the nest for themselves. Complicated. Vying for father’s attention. So sure in your mother’s love, yet convinced there is a favorite._

 

_That too is what war is like. Brothers roughhousing with bullets and bayonets, arguing with mortars, feuding with severed limbs. Killing is a brother’s game, Cain and Abel said so._

 

_You kill more than bodies in war though. You grind your happiness to dust. Love comes in the form of water and a shoulder to sleep on. Grief becomes nothing, a passing flicker of the thought of shedding a tear. Talking is an act of rebellion, willingly opening your mouth to taste the rot in the air. You are alive still, tasting death's approach._

 

_When your own mouth starts to taste of rot, the words will not come. They’ve died in your throat, a gangrene of expression. You are a dead man, praying for the day when your body stops working._

 

_Your brother is more than happy to oblige. He waits on the other side of no man’s land. All you have to do is stand and show your face._

 

_That too is something difficult to do in war._

 

_-_

 

The war is ending, but it is not over.

 

Not yet.

 

This is when war is at it’s most disgusting, most vile. When dark things are slithering through men’s hearts, men who would do anything to go home. Kill, die, run. It doesn’t matter, the war is going to follow you home at this point. It’s matted in your hair, dried under your nails.

 

Newt is tired, but he looks into his suitcase, hidden under deep layers of spells, and sees all the creatures he’s spared from war. The ones he killed for, nearly died for, and they sleep peacefully while the world around them claws itself to shreds. The tattered earth brings the creatures to him now, he can hear the ground humming when in search of one.

 

The war is ending and men are desperate, shooting anything that is not one of their own in the hopes it will speed along an armistice, a victory. Everyone knows those are determined by how many people die, not how many still live.

 

This war was not a victory for Newt, who keeps an empty dragon’s nest in a lonely cave habitat in his suitcase. Who now cares for so many little ones, their sires and mothers dead from human viciousness. War leaves orphans of human and creature children alike.

 

His brother is pale and wan in the hospital bed, sick with something of the soul. Newt sits by his cot when he’s not in the field, feeling hideously filthy in the pristine tent. Holds his older brother’s hand, broad and strong, warm beneath his freezing fingers. Theseus fitfully sleeps, sees things when he’s awake, always seeking Newt out.

 

“Newt? Newt are you there?”

 

He squeezes Theseus’ hand, not looking up from where he’s reading a treatise on dragons.

 

“When we get home…..when we get back to England. Don’t tell them.”

 

“Tell them what?”

 

“What you did. Don’t tell them. They won’t understand. They’ll kill you.”

 

Newt brushes his brother’s wine dark hair back from his forehead, humming quietly, waits for Theseus to calm down.

 

“No need to worry about that now.”

 

“But Newt-”

 

“Worrying means you suffer twice. Shh, go back to sleep.”

 

Theseus looks up at him and Newt wonders if he’s always been this small. Broad Theseus, the monster slayer. His brother’s eyes unfocus and he grasps for Newt’s hand again.

 

“Newt? Newt are you there?”

 

This time Newt doesn’t squeeze his brother’s hand. That’s a question he’s been asking himself lately.

 

_Are you there?_

 

No one answers.

 

-

 

_Dreams after you’ve been through war are never the same. Before, you’d dream of the outdoors, always running through the woods. You’d dream of flying across the world, of fingers linked together, being safe and warm. Good things. Exhilarating things._

 

_Dreams after war are like death._

 

_Dark and full of strange things. The beat of your heart, the harsh breath of the soldier beside you. The metallic stench of bloody earth. Rot. Fear. You grew so quiet, because words filled your mouth with the ashes of the dead._

 

_Smeared with dirt, mud caked in your hair. As though you could fade into the ground beneath you. Be swallowed up and taken from this place. You were alive but you wanted to be buried. Wanted to fill your mouth with bullet casings and hoped the ferryman would accept them as payment. You wanted to die and still death would not take you, took the men beside you instead, the women in the streets, the children beneath the floorboards._

 

_You wanted to die, but you were refused._

 

_Not yet._

 

_Not yet._

 

_Not yet._

 

_The war is not over. So for now you dream, an imitation of eternal sleep._

 

_-_

Home is….

 

soft.

 

The bed is not made from the earth. The food is well-cooked, easy to chew. The air is clean, smells like grass and heather. There are no bones jutting from the dirt, only rocks worn smooth by rain and wind.

 

Home is….

 

sweet.

 

Butter on bread. Mother’s love. Father’s pride. It all tastes good. He can speak and the ashes of the dead do not fill his mouth. Rot does not well up in his throat, turning his teeth into pits of decay, his voice into the silence of the mouthless dead.

 

Home is…..

 

Home is…..

 

Home is…..

 

Killing him. You cannot take a man who has done nothing but kill for four years and send him straight home. There is no flesh to sink a knife into, no enemy to fight. Only his own ghosts, pulling at his hair, screaming in his ear. He is not like Theseus, who has gained some life back by being home. Who thrives in the clear air and sunshine, still filled with wonder at life.

 

Newt lays down in the tall grass and tries to breathe. Animals come up to him, wondering if this is the same boy the animals-from-three-generations-ago spoke about. With his red hair and eye like the valley snakes. They do not not touch him, save for the butterflies that settle on his hair.

 

(He’s convinced they can smell the blood that turned it from copper to ruddy brown.)

 

This is how his mother finds him, a crown of Gatekeepers fluttering about his head. She sits down beside him, skirts smelling of hay from the hippogriff barns just as they always have.

“Newton,” she says, stroking back his hair and scattering the butterflies. “My love. Why do you stay?”  
  


“Stay?” he asks, tilting his head. She shakes her head, wisps of black hair falling from her bun.  
  


“ _Paidi mou_ , You know better than to be obtuse with me. Why do you stay when you do not want to? I know you have suffered.”

 

“This is home, this is where I’ve wanted to be.”

 

She cups his face and he leans into her, hiding his face in her skirts like he had when he was small.

 

“This place hurts you doesn’t it? Rubs salt in the wounds of your heart?”

 

He nods.

 

“Mama,” he whispers, clutching at her skirts. “Mama, it hurts so bad. My jaw. My fingers. My knees. Every joint feels like it’s being pulled apart.”

 

“That is what war does. Shows you the world and tears you apart, makes you leave pieces of yourself across continents. You must find them again.”

 

He looks up at her, her twin yellow eyes staring into his one. She’s smiling, though he knows it will break her heart to watch him leave again. She licks her finger with a forked tongue, rubs dirt from his cheek.

 

“The time has come for you to take your place in this world, my Artemis. Take your suitcase, your creatures, and heal yourself.”

 

“What about you and father? Theseus? You need my help.”

 

She shakes her head, strokes his hair back again. Newt feels something settle over his skin, magic older than anything he’s ever felt. Slowly she stands and brings him to his feet.

 

“No my son. You need ours. Now go. Run away. Hide your feelings, keep your magic close. And come back to visit for Christmas.”

 

With a press of her lips against his forehead, he’s free. The chain of home loosened from around his heart. Her eyes, the ghost of a lamia in their blood, flicker again, lifting the hold a mother has over her children. Releasing him from the obligations of family. Family, the closest kind of war.

 

(It is not over. Not yet.)

 

-

 

_Free._

 

_You are free to roam._

 

_That is a heavy burden. The world is still screaming, yearning for a war wound hastily sewn shut by trivial words. You cannot offer anything but promises to care for the creatures the earth brings you._

 

_(Muggles do not bind their oaths in blood, and that is what keeps war so close to them. Lurking under their skin. They forget the taste of it and yearn for more.)_

 

_Freedom is never without cost. You have no home, your family miles and miles and oceans away. You have no reputation (how quickly humans forget their ghosts) and no prestige (Scamander was once the name of a river god, but even gods die and you are as mortal as they come ). You are empty._

 

_And yet._

 

_When you call out to yourself. When you ask your heart if it still beats, your throat can now produce words. You are no longer rotting, hoping for death. The dead have been buried, no longer rushing to fill your mouth as ashes in the air. You answer back._

 

_I’m here._

 

_I survived._

 

_It is enough._

  
  
  
  
  
  


               

  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> This is the summation of a lot of yakking back and forth on tumblr. I cried writing it, BYE.


End file.
